Why I Am Realising That The Conversations Around the "Skills Gap" Are Unhelpful.

One month into my master's degree and I am realising that we might be getting the conversation on skills almost, or maybe entirely wrong. I enrolled for a Master of Education (M.Ed) – Specialising in Education & Work at Wits University at the end of February, and I must admit that a course that I expected would confirm all the orthodoxies around skills development that I had come to believe ever since I started watching World economic Forum videos on the exciting opportunities that come with the 4th Industrial Revolution, has not done that at all. I have had to rethink a lot of that now, and I suppose this master’s course is doing its job rather well if it leaves me upset, intrigued, disillusioned and inspired to speak up and take action. There are several issues to address here, including the oversupply of skills, how tech skills have been a central feature in the conversation on the "skills gap" and finally I will address the issue of whether economies in Africa can absorb the skills that we are so keen on teaching.

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The idea that a "skills shortage" is behind poor economic growth in South Africa and is the fault of our education system has become the gospel truth in recent years. Education and work professor Stephanie Allais of the Centre for Research into Education & Labour (REAL) at the University of the Witwatersrand has written extensively on this issue, and I have the great pleasure of being taught directly by her. The argument that she makes is that often times we look to the education system which, granted is wrought with many issues in South Africa, as a scapegoat to blame for our poor economic growth and the prospects of young people (Allais, 2015). The issue with this argument is that it spurs government, private companies, and NGOs alike to rush to try and “fill” this skills gap, with little regard for whether the economy is growing sufficiently enough or whether the structure of our industries, enterprises and the relationships between government and businesses actually creates room for these skills to be absorbed into meaningful work.

What we end up being faced with is the orthodox of a “skills shortage”, without really addressing if our rush to supply these skills will be met with industries or institutional frameworks that are set up to absorb these skills into their operations. As a result, this rush to supply skills in a variety of programmes and university interventions does not critically look at whether there is a skills shortage or an “opportunity shortage”.

Tech is a central feature in this conversation. The idea is that young people need to be learning digital skills to set them up for careers of the future, and everyone is in a rush to achieve this. The results here are mixed, because objectively speaking, there are many job openings for people with a variety of technical skills such as cloud computing, software development and data science. The question, however, is whether the rush to upskill young people is met with a balanced approach to also absorb those young into meaningful jobs and why every 4 months, my team and I at work find ourselves interviewing 500-1000 unemployed IT graduates who were told that if they study technology, they would have a place in the future world of work. Again, there is no doubt that we do need a steady supply of technology skills in the economy that we have today, but the question with technology and many other skills that we’re rushing to teach, such as vocational ones, is whether we are excited by the mere prospect of young people finding jobs or if they will actually be met with them. This brings into question what role the economy plays in all of this.

I was stunned to find out that most Swiss people do not go to traditional liberal arts universities, neither do they hold degrees that would be considered an integral part of the Knowledge Economy, and yet, their unemployment rate sits at a lowly 5.4% (OECD, 2022)... in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution, even though the majority of them do not possess the ability to programme a Python script or secure data on the cloud. The question then is, how do they manage to achieve this? There is obviously no easy answer for this, but a few conjectures could be made. The first is that Switzerland’s economy is largely structured around services and manufacturing – this has been the case for many decades post-World War Two. There is a close-knit relationship between government, businesses, business associations and unions that all seek to achieve economic growth, competitiveness as well as the welfare of working people. What this means is that Switzerland has an economy that can absorb skills, and ironically does not complain about a “skills shortage” as being the reason behind economic decline or growth.

There is a sincerity in the Swiss case that the skills that most Swiss people have are directly linked to a healthy, growing economy that can absorb young people into the labour market, creating incentives for young people to attain skills. Can the same be said of South Africa? Or Africa at large? Do the skills that we impart on young people actually lead to them being absorbed into the industries that we are training them for? Or are we training them because of an uncontested orthodox that there is a “skills shortage” and solving it will lead to economic growth, even though economic growth is what is needed in order for businesses to grow, diversify their offerings and absorb the young people who are being upskilled. Otherwise, we risk printing papers to certify the skillset of young people whom the economy has no capacity to absorb and whom companies have no intention of hiring (which is a conversation for another day).

One project that we work on at CapaCiTi is an exciting one with Accenture – the world’s largest consulting company. Accenture not only funds their candidates to complete a 4-month training programme where they attain Salesforce certification and professional development, but they also have the intention of hiring them (on permanent contracts with benefits). What this demonstrates is the difference between ‘funding the skills hubris’ (throwing capital at skills programmes because you believe it will be effective, without the intention of seeing through the absorption of those skilled workers) vs ‘integration’ (actually creating a pipeline to employment and personal growth for young people). Integration is what gives life to upskilling because then, at least there is the prospect that those skilled young people will be absorbed into work - because the economy or a particular set of enterprises requires their skill-set and is willing to pay for them.

To clear up a couple of questions that I might have unintentionally raised:

• ?There are some industries that lack skilled workers and thus have to scramble to hire people who almost meet those requirements but do not quite.
• The education system in South Africa has many areas of dysfunction that need to be addressed because even if you remove the skills argument, learners need an enriching learning experience that leaves them literate and able to acquire more skills. The absence of these skills leads to a miserable life because no one should be left illiterate, even when the economy cannot absorb their high-knowledge skills.
• Skills development programmes still hold a lot of value because the acquisition of one skill leads to the acquisition of more and thus the ability to adapt to technological changes.

The argument that I am making here is simply that the diagnosis is not as simple as “the skills gap is behind our poor economic performance”, because our economic performance, which is reliant on functioning institutions and relationships from government, businesses and consumers, is what would incentivize the acquisition of skills in the first place. If there are enough automotive factories being built, then we can point to the lack of engineers and vocational skills and point to a lack of skills. If there are enough opportunities in tech, then we can point to a “skills gap” and say, “more people are needed for this operation”, as the Accenture/Salesforce example that I used above. Maybe an argument could be made for supplying skills and then attracting industries to Africa? However, that is a stretch because most international businesses would not invest in a risky endeavour like that, let alone hire the candidates who acquire those skills because that too comes with a risk to their bottom-lines. As a result, skills development remains in the ambit of CSR funds with no prospect for integration into the labour market and secure work. This is what we are getting wrong in the conversation on “skills shortages”.

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Bibliography

Allais, S., 2015. Livelihoods, Sustainability, and Skills. In: T. McCowan & E. Unterhalter, eds. Education and International Development: Practice, Policy and Research. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 237-256.

OECD, 2022. www.oecd.org. [Online]

Available at: https://www.oecd.org/newsroom/unemployment-rates-oecd-update-february-2022.htm

[Accessed 18 March 2022].

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